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build your own tool box
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hey everybody it's Charles in this video we're going to be putting together a beginner's toolbox and do it for under 2500 bucks this is a follow-up video to one I did last year building an apprentice roll cart for fifteen hundred dollars I went through the thousands of comments that you guys left on that video to put together this setup and while this is not all the tools that any mechanic or DIY will need in their entire life it's a pretty good start and I'll fill you in on exactly why I'm doing this again in a little bit starting off with the toolbox it's a Husky toolbox that's 46 inches wide by 24.5 inches deep and coming in at 480 I chose this box for two reasons one I really like the 24.5 inch step box over some of the shallower boxes or ones that were more expensive also I own this exact box I've had it for years and it's really really good for the price point I also love that there's this pegboard piece you can buy to hook onto it and give yourself a nice backing to the toolbox I prefer a deeper toolbox so there's some other boxes in the market that would work really well for a lot of people but they're only 18 inches deep this one's 24 and a half yeah it's not 30 inches deep which is what I really prefer but remember not everybody has the space for that much depth so a little toolbox buying advice buy the deepest box you can find for the price you can afford and the space you have so we have a lot of tools to put in this box let's get going I'm going to talk in depth about some not so much others adjustable wrenches are pretty self-explanatory while we're putting all this stuff in here this is not going to be the Box's final organization because this is not my toolbox so it's not my place to say how to properly organize it quick note on the adjustable stuff sometimes I don't like apprentices to have this kind of stuff especially these because they tend to grab this stuff instead of the right tool you got to do what you got to do but from a professional standpoint if you have the right tool that should be your first grab if you're building this as a diy-er or you know kind of a backyard work with your buddies kind of thing it's not as big of a deal but for the professionals these have their place make sure you're using them in the right one let's go ahead and make this kind of the pliers drawer here so I'm going to stack some stuff up a lot of this stuff came on the back of what you guys recommended I should have put in that last Apprentice box and so we're adding some different stuff some of this is stuff that over the last year I feel like has become pretty important too this this is a tool I wish I had at the very beginning of my career and it is it is it is stuck in here struggle pliers come off of there these are exhaust hanger pliers I've used these a ton in videos super super helpful of course you need a pair of side Cutters now I've actually struggled a lot more this year than I did last year and I think that's for a number of reasons one a lot of stuff is more expensive offensive than it was last year needle nose pliers very important part of your toolbox a lot of stuff is more expensive than it was last year I think we can all relate to that two with the one I built last year was specific for a VW technician beginner technician so it's a little easier for me to decide what specialty tools a rookie VW person is going to need this is going to be a little bit more Universal so it was actually really challenging it took me way more time than the first one did hose clamp pliers these are the kind that I like kind of grab those springy squeezy clampies that's my favorite kind also coming from you guys a pair of wire strippers early in my career I actually hated these automatic ones I've grown to like these a lot it's the style that I now mostly use these will automatically size and strip wires they lock in place which is nice I think that's that drawer let's move on to the next one uh let's throw some hammers in the drawer these came from Harbor Freight super affordable I've used a similar style to this one my entire career same thing with the dead blow I really tried this time to make the tools different than last time sometimes though I think I've found really the best overall thing so I just went with that something that was missing last time that I decided to add was a cut off wheel as well as an air grinder we don't have budget for electric so I think air grinder is the way to go also there's a couple of these things that I bought that I actually think you might do better not buying what I bought I'll mention those as we go but I got a lot of feedback from the guys that got the boxes that I built some more air tools a blow gun this was one that was on the list from y'all definitely a must-have I've probably lost more of these than anything in my whole career also tire pressure gauge another must have I actually have never used this exact one it took me a lot of years to find one that I really really really like and I and I ended up spending Snap-on money for one but I started out with something similar to this oftentimes rookies aren't doing a ton of like gravy suspension work at least they shouldn't be anyway in my opinion but this is another one of those tools that I wish I had very early in my career I have one now the same exact one that I have here I use it often even in places where I think I could probably get away with not using it I tend to use it and that is this ball joint press so you slide this tool in as you tighten this bolt down squeezes the ball joint and it pops out sometime in very dramatic fashion I think since we're working in air tools in this drawer we can go ahead and put our impact gun this is a place where if you are smart unlike me if you're smart and build your collection over time you could save I think 60 bucks on this air gun I think I paid 169 for it when I buy bought it this year I paid 100 bucks last year for it so it was quite a bit cheaper 60 bucks is a lot and it's super solid impact gun this is another place too where electric would be really cool I just don't think as you're starting out it's worth the extra money right away I think for the price Delta which is well over a hundred dollars pneumatic pneumatic's the way to go let's just go ahead and get these magnetic trays out too since they're sitting right here nice and easy they don't require a drawer we can just doink them to the side another nice thing about this toolbox is there's an outlet on the side I really like the side Outlet the front Outlet like my main box has great except it always gets cords caught in the top drawer or blocks the top drawer with cords also you can never have enough of these things I mean I guess you could you know it's so funny I put these together and I'm thinking man this is so many tools and as I'm loading this box up it's like there's going to be a lot of room left in this box I think last time I did this exact same pick set super good value for the picks a lot of the stuff I chose to has a lifetime warranty you know as much as it would be awesome to walk on the Snap-on truck spend all the money right just just buy all your tools from Snap-on or Matco or Mac or any any other tool truck brand that's kind of dumb for a new technician you're new you don't need so much quality in your tools as you need quantity you need a lot of stuff if you're like me you started out with a 250 piece Craftsman set and that was everything you had and that's enough that's enough to get going and then you buy your box and build your kid out as as you go and hopefully you're working at a good shop that the shop foreman will help you put together or what you know a group of the kind of the experience guys will help you put together a good kit and that's where I think we often do fail our rookie technicians we let him jump on the Snap-on truck let him spend three thousand dollars which is super easy to do and the worst part slash best part in some ways is you pay 50 bucks a week but you end up paying that indefinitely this is not a great way to store screwdrivers my friends there are much better ways but that's how we're gonna do it right now what we can do though in that same screwdriver drawer is put this trim tool kit this is a pretty I have it upside down this is a pretty legit kit of trim tools I've actually found that I've lost more of these than I care to especially when I don't buy them when I get them for free I lose them a lot but it has trim clip popping pliers the trim clip popper tool there the little like pry bar tool and a bunch of different things and radio Keys oh shoot I didn't even notice this these are wire pin tools I didn't even know that when I got it so bonus next up we got some fun stuff some of my favorite stuff Milwaukee impact and drill kit 200 bucks I still think this is one of the best values for this kind of thing I came this close though not to getting these and what I actually almost got was a similar set with a bigger battery from rigid two reasons for The Ridges one it was cheaper 140 Bucks versus 200 bucks for this one two Rigid power tools have a lifetime warranty and that is incredibly huge so um you know you have to be mindful and smart when you're putting this stuff together and I'm gonna tell you why I went with Milwaukee one I'm a Milwaukee fan I have tons and tons and tons of Milwaukee Tools two I did it to try and give a little bit of Advantage down the road so once you get on a battery platform you have the batteries you can easily buy just bare tools instead of buying like the whole other kit with batteries and then you have like 75 of these kind of chargers that you don't ever use or anything like that so I tried to get them on a platform that had a wide breadth of tools that they're likely to want or need in their career which is why I went with this drill this impact these are also the two that I use most often two other things to go along with those impact is a set of bits now you're probably looking at this brand going oh that's not the best out there Charles those are really really cheap I know but what I didn't want to have is no bits no bits at all because no bits is a bad amount of bits this is another place where like do you really need to spend Snap-on money I pick on Snap-on a lot that's probably my favorite truck brand which is why I always say it because it's the first one that comes to mind but you don't need to spend that kind of money on bits there's plenty of other stuff and this this will get you to a place where you can evaluate what you're doing and decide do I need these or do those need to go in the garbage and I need to get something else rather than spending 500 on a bit set and you use three of them also to go along with those impacts these adapters this will allow you to use a socket on the impact which is pretty much my bread and butter here is one where I think is actually not a smart buy but I got it anyway this one came off the feedback of the four guys that have gotten those roll carts that we put together last year and this is the tool that I think most of them went out and bought first this Milwaukee electric ratchet now I love this electric ratchet I own a couple of these electric ratchets I use these electric ratchets but I think for the almost 200 bucks I think 200 bucks this one costs this is a fuel you save a little bit of money by not buying the fuel but it's not much I think for the 200 bucks you're better off buying a 20 air powered ratchet and saving your money if money is that tight if you have some budget this is a great addition to your tool kit again I I use mine all the time I I prefer quarter inch to 3 8 but they didn't have the quarter inch so I got the 3 8 you already have the battery for it so you can get bare tool it's a great tool I just think if you are super budget conscious and you have access to unlimited shop air then the pneumatic ones probably a smarter buy at first if you're a DIY or at home and you don't have a big air compressor or even a smaller one kind of like that one I have over there running an air powered ratchet off of that thing double stinks one you have the noise of the ratchet two you have the noise of the compressor running so for at home Electric's the way to go but if you're at the shop you can get a cheap Chicago Pneumatic or whatever it's called from Harbor Freight air ratchet it's like 20 bucks you can get a swivel on it so that you have a little more articulation and you're in for maybe forty dollars versus almost 200 for the electric one in fact that's exactly what I did so this was my old air ratchet that I used at the shop this is the swivel piece I was talking about so the air hose goes here and it allows you to really get some good articulation here's a grinder that I bought 20 bucks actually it's the same one in the Box weirdly enough I've had this forever but this is the this is the key right here to really get good movement the kind of movement you don't get when there's just a hose attached to it if you're doing air tools you want a little bit better floppity get one of these guys another tool that came from you guys is this tool right here this is a brake caliper tool the rear brake caliper tool is this the best quality one ever in the history of these things absolutely not this is pretty affordable a ton of different fittings for the rear calipers that you have to rotate back in super came with gloves too I don't whatever these actually I think are good the caliper hanger hangers I might need to get myself a set of those because I don't have one now for a lot of this stuff I didn't spend the high we could as much as I felt was appropriate if someone gets this box and they're like wow these things are not great right the brake tool I have I've used three or four times and it's not great perfect time to upgrade do what I did I bought cheap tools when I first started tried to get stuff with lifetime warranty when I was ready to upgrade I'd upgrade and then took them home now something else that you guys recommended was a multimeter I don't think most technicians need to spend five or six hundred dollars on a multimeter I think a reasonable price multimeter this was 40 bucks is gonna do most everything you're gonna do in the automotive space because this is not the best tool for a lot of what we do we need one I think this one's cool it came with a temp probe I think you need one of these for quick checks but I think when you're real really in the diagnostic heat the multimeter is probably not the best tool for the job so a reasonably priced multimeter Klein makes great stuff obviously Klein didn't probably make this it's just Klein branded it didn't fit in that drawer we'll have to find another home for it what about the next drawer down oh that's steeper I still use my multimeter from tech school 20 years later I went through leads spending money on good leads is a good idea but I don't think you need to spend a whole lot of money on the multimeter something else will feed into the electric store is this flashlight I'm also not going to open this because I don't want it to get lost or I don't want to end up grabbing it and using it until whoever gets this box against this box there are so many of you that absolutely love this light it's super bright three settings ton of articulation so a good inspection light is vital whether it's that one whether it's a pen light like the Stylus Pro I'll link that one up too because I'm a huge fan of that light I also want to point out that moments ago this table was completely filled with tools and we only have tools I think in four drawers one two three four five maybe six five drawers so this box is gonna have a lot of room to expand in the future we still got a pretty good amount of tools left I grabbed a half inch torque wrench and a 3 8 torque wrench and the half inch is pretty much you should be torquing wheels down as best you can youngster the 3 8 is because a lot of the stuff you're going to be doing you need much less torque than a big half inch torque wrench is going to provide for you and you know when you get some experience you feel what 10 newton meters feels like you have a calibrated torque arm click click buzz buzz whatever until you get that you should be torquing everything down at least at least early on I'll tell you guys what this Pittsburgh breaker bar I have a similar one this one's a little loose I'd probably tighten it up a little bit I still have this one I bought it before I started at the dealership we also have pry bars I almost bought pry bars at Harbor Freight but I actually think these are a better quality pry bar and they have a strike cap on them I'm also not gonna open these because this makes a decent Storage Tray the package that they come in also this is one area where I actually think the box is inferior to the roll cart there's not a good place to store things that would store much better vertical like pry bars and like screwdrivers and things like that coming from a recommendation from you guys wobble extensions the way these work is kind of cool you'll see there's kind of like a rounded end on the top here you have to be careful with these because they can get you in a bad way if you're not paying attention so if you put a socket on it it gives you a little bit of wobble you go to tighten a bolt the normal extensions here but you need to be here gives you just a little bit of wobble I actually don't recommend these for like your normal extensions these are specialty in my opinion because they can get you get you wobbly so use use these with caution there are extensions in our socket set that I bought so I think that is going to be okay got a set of Allens got a set of torques I don't know if whoever's going to be using this stuff is going to need those things but a lot of cars use that stuff this is the place where it's wild how much money you can spend in that socket and really tool in general organization I got these because they were cheap it's like 35 or something like that for the entire set metric and standard this is not my favorite way to store sockets but you can store them standing up which is my favorite way there is a magnetic set from Vim that I really like completely slidable and everything westling machine makes my favorite ones they look like these here but I'll tell you they're expensive I think they're worth all the money you don't have two hundred dollars to outfit your whole box with socket rails when you're first starting out you need the sockets more so than the rails you're going to want the rails eventually but that doesn't need to be a super early thing going along with our impact got to have the sockets to go with it this actually has 3 8 and half inch drive it's got 37 pieces now this next thing I only bought because it was on sale for two bucks and that is a bottle opener so you can open up your root beer one more specialty socket that I thought probably does actually make sense is an O2 sensor socket uh also a side note tecton this brand a lot of you guys in that last video recommended this brand the kits are more than what I spent for hand tools but they do have a lifetime warranty and a ton of you guys recommended so when you're searching for your hand tools that may be a brand you want to check out moving on and these next two things came from you guys a brake pad indicator so you slip this in the brake pad to check how much pad you have left which is a great idea a tread depth gauge always a great idea to see how much tire tread you have left and the kit actually came with a digital one too which is kind of neat I actually liked this kit so much these three things all came together I bought one for myself you gotta have a magnet actually you got to have more than one magnet in general there are also three more things that I ordered that haven't come yet one is this oil change socket kit another one is a standard traditional oil change wrench and an inspection mirror next up is an under hood light now this is a place where you could probably forego especially early on this one was like 95 and it has some lights on it that have multiple brightnesses what I like about this kind of thing is not only can you put it under the hood but you can put it inside the car if you've watched other of my videos you've seen me do both of those things but I have a hack for you if you'll notice this is a light that normally would have a battery on it that doesn't have a battery on it it has a cord so what I do is I use an under hood light similar to how I just showed and so that I don't have to worry about recharging it or recharging batteries or any of that stuff I buy this really cheap light it's like 15 bucks from Home Depot Motorsports and then I zip tie it on then I have light Forever This has probably been on for two months straight without being moved or turned off and don't come at me because I'm still working on this TT somehow we still got a lot of stuff left to go now we have the socket set that has a whole bunch of things 290p socket set we'll talk about this one in a minute it this one however came directly from you guys and you're like hey rookie rookie mechanic needs a scan tool and that roll cart I didn't agree with you because that was going to be a dealer VW technician getting that cart now actually that program funny enough that program expanded to Honda and they've done not nine nine carts five of them accounted for so with that video we all helped nine young technicians get their start you guys should be super proud of yourself I'm so excited hopefully this that keeps expanding more in the company and all that this is a 500 Universal Dual communication scan tool from Top Don super dope it did pull long coating on my Mark 8 which is kind of wild that it can do that you can also email reports to customers or to the shop or whatever a ton of capability for 500 bucks I'm gonna be trying it on a couple other cars that I have before whoever gets this box gets this box because I want to learn about it I actually saw these guys at SEMA Apex it's not wireless and it comes with some other adapters but I actually prefer it not being Wireless that's one less failure point for your scan tool which does happen I got something that's my favorite part this is not included in the 2500 budget this didn't come solicited this came on the back of a very good friend of mine named Paul Danner you guys probably know him as scanner Danner pretty cool what Charles is doing offering you guys some help getting started in this field I wanted to be part of it but this is about Charles not me so I'm gonna give my book I'm gonna give a one year subscription to scanner Dan or premium and then also a 200 SD Grant to shop at AES wave and they match dollar for dollar with me so it will end up being 400 once that Grant is applied Charles thank you so much for what you do in this industry and I'm just happy to be partnered with you in it so Paul amazing stuff I can't thank you enough for that contribution it means the world and whoever gets this box nanoman what uh what an additional gift I'm not including that in the budget but how you can't tell Paul Danner no when he offers to throw throw that kind of thing out to uh to a future technician or a very young technician in their career so Paul thank you if y'all don't follow Paul after this video go over her to his channel follow him subscribe whatever and tell him that you saw this video and that he's an awesome dude and I think that will make his day next for our hand tools uh everything is actually encased in this nice case which I might just leave in case reason being I'm gonna have to transport this box somewhere most likely and then it'll just have to all get redone but ah this is this was the piece that was probably the hardest to decide out of everything was what do I do about the hand tools the other one that I was going to get was a Quin set from Harbor Freight but they weren't on sale when I went to buy them this has half inch 3 8 quarter inch Drive metric and standard it was 180 it's got a couple of wrenches in it too some extensions up at the top some specialty bits with a bit driver right here it is nice that it's all encased in a case you got sockets and something I wish I wish tool companies would stop doing this is kind of neat these actually would probably come in handy super thin wrenches tool companies if you watch this and maybe you guys will agree Post in the comments let me know if you agree quit doing this put the right number of tools that the thing has on the thing and don't give us 87 Allen wrenches we don't need them we don't use them or maybe you do and if you do them sorry but that drives me insane 290 pieces of it 90 of them is damn Allen wrenches moving on so we got deep we got shallow we got some spark plug sockets this one is not going to to be everything a technician's ever going to need but it doesn't skip 16 it doesn't skip 17 it's got numerated in order so it might miss some fraction ones but I don't know how to do fractions so I'm going to leave it in this case whoever gets the box is going to have the socket organizers to organize this this also does have 12 point husky ratchets are also pretty solid and they do have a lifetime warranty and you could just go to Home Depot and get them warrantied and look at this is a good size little quarter inch so I said I was going to tell you exactly what was going to happen with this box and it's time to do that last year when I built that box I knew it was going to the dealer a new technician was going to get it and the dealership bought all those tools this year I didn't have that they're still building carts but I didn't want to just do the same video I did last year for you guys so here's what I'm gonna do it's pretty clear that I don't need these tools and I don't need this box I have plenty of that as you see behind me and I spent the last 20 years perfecting my own personal tool collection which is part of the fun of working on cars but also a lot of your budget for working on cars as well I'm I'm going to give this box away there's a group called Tech Force foundation and last year I gave them five thousand dollars worth of scholarship to give to two young upcoming technicians that have given cash this year I'm going to donate this box and these tools through techforce Foundation I'll link techforce down below so you can check them out so who's going to get this box I don't know where are they going to be at in their career I don't know but with any luck I will be able to personally deliver this box to that person and what I'm hoping for is that we can make this not just an annual thing but a couple of times a year thing I bought all of these tools that you see before me minus two things one our man scanner Dan are committing to what he committed to which is just I'm insanely thankful for and the other one is the scan tool top down has reached out to me many times asking me to review their scan tools and I've never agreed to it however they were kind enough to contribute that scan tool and that does something for me too that allows me to check it out and see if it's worth something you guys considering so far I'm pretty impressed actually I'm excited to contribute back and give back to an automotive industry that's been pretty good to me now for those of you in the industry I think we can all agree and say there's a lot about the automotive industry that is straight trash trash employers trash things manufacturers do bad customers it's been good to me if we ever want it to be better giving a kid a toolbox ain't gonna get it done but it's one piece of a really big puzzle now I also put together a document with links and prices to everything that I showed you today so that document will be linked up one final thing what did I miss I know I missed something so drop that down in the comments let's use the comment section for good and continue to build out a huge resource for people to go and look at and Define what tools they need what they can add to their collection maybe I bought something here that you think is dumb be nice but let me know too what would you have done differently maybe on the next one I'll grab one of you guys and you can come shopping with me and we can build a box together with that I'm out this way out have an awesome day and I'll talk to you again next time ...
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